Ask Brian: Can my daughter get a job with an arts degree?

QUESTION: My daughter has recently listed arts in UCD as her first CAO course choice. I am concerned that recent data shows far lower employment secured by arts graduates than those in other disciplines. My daughter is expecting to secure more than 500 points. Would she be wasting them by applying for an arts degree?

ANSWER: I graduated with an arts degree from UCD 40 years ago and I found it to be a wonderful environment on which to build my career. I had far less lecture time than engineering or medical students, for example, but I used this time to become involved in a wide range of college activities, becoming a member of the student representative body, an active member of the college debating society and an officer of the students' union.

The combination of my academic and nonacademic activities during the three years of my degree gave me a basket of flexible skills that enabled me to successfully navigate the various challenges that life threw at me over the past 40 years.

The fact that the recent Higher Education Authority report you refer to indicated that fewer arts graduates than other disciplines are in degree-related employment nine months after graduating simply reflects the fact that some degree programmes are vocational in nature.

Many, for example, prepare students for specific tasks – becoming a primary school teacher, dentist, nurse or architect, for example. But others – such as arts, social science, business or science, which attract the vast majority of students – are formative in a broad sense but do not prepare you for a specific occupation.

What arts degrees do very well is nurture and challenge a student in a climate of creativity, analysis and inquiry, and develop skills that are necessary for every economy and society.

If your daughter secures her place in UCD, she will experience a breadth of choice within and across interdisciplinary areas through a modular structure that allows flexibility, which is an increasing feature of the global world.

She will develop the skills of inquiry, research, critical thinking and problem-solving to pursue and evaluate knowledge.

She will be taught how to evaluate ideas, challenge assumptions and develop creative solutions to problems through the independent pursuit of knowledge and making connections between different disciplinary approaches and methods. The flexibility of her degree programme will allow her to develop effective communication, digital expertise, collaboration and leadership skills to convert decisions and commitments into action.

Dr Marie Clarke, dean of arts at UCD, says arts students develop crucial skills such as understanding how to learn and appreciating the complexity of ideas, societies, cultures and language. "They can articulate the links between past and present as well as the influence of the past on shaping community and societal structures and beliefs," she says. "They understand the relevance and contribution of the arts and humanities to contemporary society and cultural practice."

I would have no fear of your daughter selecting an arts degree. Irish arts and humanities graduates have an impressive track record of graduate employability in the commercial, public and creative arts sectors throughout the world.

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